U Sam Oeur

U Sam Oeur was born in 1936 in Svay Rieng province and spent his childhood tending buffaloes and growing rice. Educated in the French schools of Phnom Penh, he studied in the United States, at California State University, Los Angeles, then at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, which he left in 1968. Back in Cambodia, he ran a cannery, served in Lon Nol's army and on the Cambodian delegation to the United Nations. Under the Khmer Rouge, he survived by feigning illiteracy. He lives in Texas, where he translates Whitman into Khmer.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetrySacred VowsU Sam Oeur · 1998Literature